Landmines

Antipersonnel mines and cluster munitions are indiscriminate weapons that injure and kill civilians in every corner of the globe, every day. They don't recognize ceasefires and they continue to claim victims long after the end of conflicts. They instill fear in communities and are a lethal barrier to development.

Since 1992, Norwegian People`s Aid (NPA) has become one of the lead NGOs in the field of humanitarian mine action, undertaking programs to battle mines and ERW (explosive remnants of war) in a total of 25 countries worldwide.  Active today in 18 affected countries, NPA is one of the major global NGO contributors to reduction of the world wide problems created by landmines and ERW, spending more than USD 30 million annually on this activity alone.

NPA’s approach to the problem of landmines and ERW is:

a) Implementation of humanitarian demining and cluster/ERW removal programs

 b) Support to national mine action structures of affected countries

c) Political, methodological and technical advocacy work to influence the development of this field of humanitarian assistance.

These abovementioned approaches are considered by NPA as mutually reinforcing and synergistic activities that in the most effective way address the humanitarian and political objectives and ambitions of the two core frameworks for our work, namely the Mine Ban Treaty of 1999 and the Convention on Cluster Munitions of 2010.

NPA is currently also in process of defining its role in an overall initiative to address the general use and availability of explosives in the world.